TR

Meet BlackBerry Playbook, a tablet PC from RIM | ZDNet.

First thoughts:

• Too little:  I don’t neeed something that is merely 7″.  If it isn’t the same size screen as an iPad, I’m really not interested in using it for… well anything.  I have a powerful phone with a large enough screen to do interesting things with, but if I want to watch video or read a book or browse the web, the screen needs to have enough real estate to be readable and show a lot of content without a lot of zooming.  I actually wish the iPad was another 0.5″ – 1.0″ bigger diagonally, but definitely no smaller.
• Too bloated:  I was tempted to say too powerful, but that really ties into my next point so lets go with bloated.  Yes, this will be a secure enterprise ready device.  It will also be a complete bear to deal with as a mere consumer.  I strongly suspect this will only be adopted by those whose enterprise IT shops won’t allow them to use an iPad or Android device for enterprise work.  The only people I know with BlackBerry’s admit they only have them because their company won’t support anything else… yet.
• Battery life?:   i.e. too powerful.  One of the articles I read on the press event noted that not once was battery life mentioned.  I strongly suspect that is with good reason.  All those connectors, drivers, underlying crypto and high res screen come at a huge power cost.  Add in the smaller form-factor reducing the battery size available and I see a huge market for add-on mobile power-packs or replacement batteries if they are removable.  That is of course if there’s any adoption of these.

My verdict:  No honkin’ way do I want one of these things.  Not interested at all for any reason.

Android isnt surging just because Apple is letting it | ZDNet.

I agree with this article and definitely take issue (as does this author) with the fact that iPhone’s user experience is superior to Android’s.  I completely, 100% disagree.  I had an iPhone given me to use for work and really didn’t take to it very well.  It was an early version, but I found the lack of simple things like multi-tasking, no cut-n-paste, no Flash support really disconcerting.  Consequently, when left to my own devices (pun intended), I went and got an Android Incredible.  Awesome!  This behaves exactly as I expect my mobile device to work.

Last week, I took delivery on a new iPad and again ran into many of the same frustrations I had with the iPhone only now magnified as I was spoiled after several months with my Android.  I was also surprised to find that while there are a great many apps on the Apple Store, it appears from my searching that a higher % of them cost money while there is a huge amount of free content on Android’s store.  Now I do love my iPad because of the form factor, but woe unto Apple when a similar form-factor Android device comes available.

Long story short, Android is earning its way, but Apple has given it a hand up by it’s AT&T exclusivity contract.

P.S. Oh, and AT&T morons… ya want high margin sales, then perhaps stocking iPad accessories would be a good place to start.  I had to drive by probably a dozen AT&T stores to get to the Apple store to find accessories for my new iPad after stopping at the first 2 AT&T stores and being told “go to the Apple store”.